A framework based on quality function deployment for requirements analysis in enterprise modelling

Competitiveness and globalization force enterprises to quickly adapt to changing conditions of markets. Enterprises employ some modelling methodologies to organize their strategic knowledge to cope with this change, which results in an enterprise model. Requirements discovery and analysis is the most important phase in creating the enterprise model because any mistake in the requirements discovery deteriorates the validity of the model, resulting in user dissatisfaction. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a well-known and integrated approach used in converting the requirements of users into final product specifications. This thesis modifies QFD for enterprise modelling, and proposes Enterprise-QFD, which provides a common platform that can be integrated with any methodology for discovering and analyzing enterprise requirements. The study synthesizes enterprise modelling, requirements analysis and modelling, and QFD concepts and proposes an approach based on modern QFD to analyze the requirements of an enterprise from the long term goals to the functional, informational, organizational, and resource characteristics. The modified QFD tables involve some required columns added and unnecessary ones deleted based on enterprise modelling. A novel matrix content and sequence is also proposed. In the scope of the study, Enterprise-QFD is applied to a small business company processing steel products with real evaluations and the findings to show the usability of the method. After the requirements are analyzed and modelled by Enterprise-QFD, the findings are transferred to the requirements model of CIMOSA, a complicated enterprise reference architecture. The results show that Enterprise-QFD generates the infrastructure for further modelling of enterprise architectures concerning both functional characteristics of enterprise and needs of stakeholders.